The Birth of Venus

by Sarah Dunant

  “But . . . I cannot . . .”

  My voice died away. I watched his smile grow. “You cannot what? Cannot paint a young girl who is about to defy her parents and the world in order to follow her own calling?” He picked up a brush and held it out. “In the sketches of your sister you made your father’s cloth move like water. The wall is less forgiving than the page, but you of all people have no need to be afraid of it.”

  I stood staring at the space where Santa Caterina would be. My whole body was tingling. He was right. I knew her. Knew everything that she was feeling now: the collision of excitement and trepidation. In my mind I had painted her already.

  “I have mixed ocher, skin tones, and two different reds. Tell me if there is any other shade you need.”

  I took the brush from his hand, and now it was impossible to know if my seasickness was about the danger of us or the challenge of her. The first stroke, and the sight of that iridescent color sliding off the brush onto the wall got me over my fear. I watched the way my wrist moved as it maneuvered the brush, the way the order and the action indelibly connected. Everything about it was so physical: the precision of each stroke, the texture of the paint as it collided with the plaster, how the two bonded and coalesced, the exhilaration as the image grew and rounded under your fingers . . . Oh, if I had been Fra Filippo I would never have wanted to be out of my cell.

  For the longest time we did not talk. He worked next to me, preparing the paints and cleaning the brushes. And so Caterina grew into her garments, her sturdy peasant legs firm but unseen under the cloth. And her expression, when it came, spoke I hope of the courage it took to leave as well as the grace it gave her. Eventually my fingers grew numb with the tension of holding the brush. “I have to rest,” I said, pulling away from the wall. And as I came up for air I felt my balance falter.

  He grabbed my arm. “What is wrong with you? I knew it. You’re ill.”

  “No,” I said. “No. I am not. . . .” I knew what I should say, but I couldn’t get the words out.

  We stood looking at each other again. I couldn’t breathe. I had no idea what I was going to do next. We might never find ourselves alone again in our lives. We had done our courtship in this chapel, though neither of us had realized that was what it was.

  “I don’t—”

  “I wanted—”

  His voice was more urgent than mine.

  “I wanted to see you. I didn’t know . . . I mean, when you didn’t come I began to think . . .”

  His arms went around me, and his body was familiar to me as if all this time I had kept some living copy of it in my mind. And I felt desire—for I know now that that was what it was—flash up like a hot spring in my stomach.

  The noise of the sacristy door opening flung us apart so fast that it was possible he might not have seen us. That he was in pain was obvious from the way he walked, though the feeling coming off him was more one of fury. No wonder. I was like Venus and Adonis rolled into one compared with him now. The boils had colonized his face. There were three of them, one on his left cheek, another on his chin, and the last in the middle of his forehead like the Cyclops’ eye. They were fat and full of pus. He hobbled closer. Clearly he had them between his legs too, though they didn’t seem to have affected his eyes. Well, we would know soon enough.

  “Tomaso,” I said, moving quickly toward him. “How are you? How is your illness?” And I swear there was not a shred of triumph in my voice, for surely suffering brings out the sympathy in all of us.

  “Not as acceptable as yours.” He looked at me steadily. “Though Plautilla was right, you do look like a scarecrow. We make a good pair now.” He snorted “So. When is it due?”

  “Er . . . in the spring. April, May.”

  “So, an heir for Cristoforo, eh? Well done, you. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

  I felt the painter stiffen at my side. I glanced at him. “You probably know,” I said, in a voice that vibrated with jollity, “I am with child. But I have been ill with it, so it is yet to show.”

  “With child?” He stared at me. The mathematics were not hard, even for a monastery boy.

  I stared back. If you love a man for his honesty, you cannot become angry when he shows it.

  Tomaso stared at both of us.

  “So, Tomaso, have you seen the chapel?” I said, turning to him with a fluidity that would have made my dancing teacher weep for joy. “Don’t you think it is wonderful?”

  “Mmm. Very nice.” But he was still staring.

  “Your likeness is most . . .”

  “Flattering,” he finished brusquely. “But then we had an understanding, the painter and I, didn’t we? It is a wonder what secrets will do. I hear it was my sister who helped you through your . . . unfortunate illness. When was that? Early summer, wasn’t it? How many months ago is that?”

  “Speaking of secrets,” I said sweetly, always the surest sign of vitriol between us, “Mother tells me you have been to confession.” Come on, I thought. Leave him alone. You know you and I are the best players in this game. Anyone else gets knocked down too easily.

  He scowled. “Yes . . . How good of her to keep you informed.”

  “Well, she knows how much I care for your spiritual well-being. Though it must have been a shock when you realized you weren’t going to die after all.”

  “Yes. But I tell you, sister, it has its advantages.” He closed his eyes as if savoring the moment. “As long as I am truly repentant, I am now saved. Which brings me great comfort, as you can imagine. Though I must say it makes me more intolerant toward other people’s sins.” And he stared again at the painter. “So tell me, how is Cristoforo?”

  “He is fine. You haven’t seen him?”

  “No. But as you see I’m not fair company anymore.”

  I looked at him. I could detect the fear in his fury. How strange for a man to have been so loved and not have grown any tenderness as a result of it. “You know, Tomaso,” I said, “I don’t think your friendship was just about your beauty.” And for a second I dropped my guard. “If it’s any consolation, I do not see much of him either. He is busy these days with other matters.”

  “Yes, I’m sure he is.” One could almost touch the open wound in his arrogance. I wondered for a moment if he was going to cry. “Well,” he said briskly, “you and I will no doubt talk more another time. For now I have kept you occupied long enough.” He gestured to the almost finished fresco. “Please. Go back to . . . whatever it was you were doing before I disturbed you.”

  We stood and watched him hobble away. When the boils burst, how much of his bitterness might drain away with their liquid? I wondered. No doubt that would depend on how disfiguring were the scars left behind. As to what he would do with his suspicions—well, worrying about that would simply make me weaker if and when it came to a fight.

  I turned to the painter. How could he begin to understand what he had stumbled into? I didn’t have the words, much less the stomach, to tell him.

  “I should finish her skirt,” I said harshly.

  “No. I need—”

  “Please . . . please, don’t ask me anything. You are well, the chapel is finished, I am with child. There is much to be grateful for.”

  And this time it was I who ended the look. I picked up the brush and moved back to the wall.

  “Alessandra!”

  His voice stopped my hand. I don’t think in all the time we had known each other that he had ever used my name. I turned.

  “It cannot be left like this. You know it.”

  “No! What I know is that my brother is too dangerous to cross and we are both at his mercy. Don’t you see? We must be strangers now. You are the painter; I am the married daughter. It is the only way we can save ourselves.”

  I turned back to the wall, only my brush was shaking too much to make the first stroke. I tightened my grip on it and willed my hand to be steady, steadier than my heart. His desire was all around me. All I had to do was turn back into
it and let it envelop me. I put the brush to the wall and gave my longing to the paint.

  After a while he joined me, and when my mother returned to the chapel to collect me, she found us painting side by side.

  Though she did not say anything, that night she sent Erila to the servants’ quarters and slept with me herself in my old bedroom, where she was so evidently restless that even I, who in the past had had so much courage for night walking, would not have dared to risk her half-open eye.

  Thirty-seven

  THE CONSECRATION WAS DONE BY THE BISHOP, WHO stayed for the shortest time, ate and drank liberally, and walked away with some splendid bolts of cloth and a silver communion chalice. Presumably he had somewhere to hide it all, since if the Angels got to hear of such gifts they would have had them out of his palace and on their carts before he could say Hail Mary.

  The priest who took mass afterward was Tomaso’s confessor. He had been a friend of my mother’s family for a long time and had tutored me through my early catechism and heard my youngest confessions. God knows what sins I had embroidered for his delectation then. I had had an early penchant for drama and had sometimes wanted to appear guiltier than I really was because I thought my absolution might take up more of God’s attention. Since I never quite got around to confessing to my confessions, there is an argument for saying I have been damned since childhood, but then the God that I grew up with had always been more benevolent than vengeful and I had been loved enough to believe he would continue that way. How many other families must there be in the city who now found themselves likewise wrong-footed by this new severity? Though watching the bishop pocket his rewards for doing what was, after all, God’s work, it was easy to see how the battle lines had been drawn.

  The service was simple: a short sermon on the grace and courage of Santa Caterina, the power of prayer, the richness of the frescoes, and the joy of the Word made paint, though the priest’s ardor was mediated by the presence of Luca, who sat in the second pew like a lump of sourdough. My brother had grown fatter in the friar’s service—I had heard a rumor that the threat of famine had seen a new wave of recruits to God’s militia in the last few weeks—with an expanded sense of his own importance. Our conversation had been cordial, if banal, until I broached the subject of the pope’s ban and the confusion it must bring to his followers, at which point Luca exploded with rage, claiming that Savonarola was the champion of the people, which meant only God had the right to exclude him from the pulpit, and he would preach again if and when he chose, regardless of any orders from Rome’s wealthiest brothel keeper.

  Indeed, my brother’s rhetoric on the corruption of the established church was now so extreme and reasoned with such clear and fervent logic—in itself a tribute to the man who had taught him—that it seemed impossible for any compromise to be reached between the two sides. Yet if Savonarola did preach again, the pope could hardly countenance such a threat to his authority. Would he use force to crush it? Surely not. In which case would we end up with some kind of schism? While I could not bear the idea of a church that denounced art and beauty, did this really mean I approved of one that sold salvation and let its bishops and popes siphon off church wealth into the pockets of their illegitimate children? Yet schism was unthinkable. One of them would have to submit.

  I glanced around at the rest of my family. My mother and father sat in the front pew, her straight back pulling him straighter. This was the moment he had dreamed about. While our wealth might be waning our heads were held high—apart, that is, from Tomaso, who sat alone, consumed by self-pity, even more self-conscious in his ugliness than he had been in his beauty. Next to him came Plautilla and Maurizio, sturdy and dull, and then my husband and me. An ordinary Florentine family. Ha! If you listened carefully you could hear the chorus of our sins and hypocrisies hissing up from our souls below.

  The painter stood at the back, and I could feel his eyes upon me. We had spent the morning moving around each other like two tide pools in a river, drawn constantly close without ever seeming to merge. Tomaso watched us with hawk eyes but forgot us the instant Cristoforo appeared. The two of them met briefly in the courtyard over a groaning refreshment table, both of them as tense as racehorses, my mother and I pretending not to notice. They barely spoke to each other, and when we were called to the chapel Tomaso broke free and turned on his heel, a clear flounce to his movement. I chose not to catch my husband’s eye, but I could not help noticing Luca’s face as they walked passed him. I remember my mother’s comment about Tomaso all that time ago: Blood is thicker than water. But was it thicker than belief?

  “YOU WERE RIGHT ABOUT YOUR PAINTER.” BACK HOME IN MY husband’s house, we sat in his neglected garden courtyard watching the dusk fall, both of us a little nervous as to what to tell. “He has talent. Though given the atmosphere of the city he would do better to go to Rome or Venice to find his next commissions.” He paused. “It’s as well your spirit doesn’t suffer from vertigo. How long did you sit for him?”

  “A few afternoons,” I said, “but it was a long time ago.”

  “Then I applaud him even more. He has caught both the child and the change in you. What happened to make such a man disfigure himself in so brutal a way?”

  No, my husband does not miss much. “For a while he lost his belief,” I said quietly.

  “Ah, poor soul. And you helped him find it again? Well, you have saved something there, Alessandra. There is great sweetness to him. He’s lucky the city has not corrupted him more.” He paused. “There is something we must talk of now—if you do not know it already. The infection that Tomaso has . . . it is contagious.”

  “Are you telling me you are ill?” I felt my stomach turn with fear.

  “No. I am telling you we both might be.”

  “In which case, where did he get it from?” I asked bluntly.

  He laughed, though there was not much humor to it. “My dear, there would not be a lot of point in asking. I have been a fool for love when it comes to your brother, ever since I first set eyes on him in the back of a gambling haunt near the old bridge four years ago. He was fifteen years old then and brash as a young colt. It was perhaps unwise of me to expect that such an infatuation could ever be mutual.”

  “Well, I could have told you that,” I said. “How long until we know for sure?”

  He shrugged. “The disease is new to us all. The only hope is that people do not seem to die from it. Other than that, there are no rules and no medicines that apply. Tomaso has fallen fast, but it may just be that he contracted it early. No one knows.”

  I thought of the pimp hanging from Ponte Santa Trinità with his innards unraveling onto the ground, and how this had been punishment for, among other things, procuring for the French everything they desired. And it made me wonder again about the murderer. What force of rectitude must be inside him and what fury!

  “But there is worse,” he said softly. “Another contagion is arrived in the city.”

  I looked at him, and he dropped his eyes. “Oh, sweet Jesus, no. When?”

  “A week, maybe longer. The first cases came to the morgue a few days ago. The authorities will try to keep it quiet for as long as they can, but it will out soon enough.”

  And though neither of us had said it, the word was already loose in the air, sliding under doors, out between the window frames into the streets, into each and every house between here and the city walls, the fear of it more infectious than the disease itself. Either God was so impressed by Florentine piety that he had chosen to call the godly to him directly, or—well, the or did not bear thinking about.

  Thirty-eight

  THE PLAGUE ARRIVED AS IT ALWAYS DID, WITH NO RHYME or reason, no forewarning, and no hint of the level of damage it might cause or how long it would rage. It was like a fire that could destroy five houses or five thousand, depending on which way the wind blew. The city still bore the scars of the great purge of a century and a half before, when it had wiped out almost half the population.
So many monks had died then, toppling like tenpins in their cells, that it had caused its own crisis of faith among those left behind, and the churches and convents were still littered with paintings from that time, all of them obsessed by the Last Judgment and the closeness of hell.

  Yet surely Florence was different now. While the boils could be seen as a scourge worthy of sinners, even a public confession of fornication, the plague was another matter. If this was indeed God’s punishment, what had we done to deserve it? It was a question Savonarola must answer.

  THE NEWS OF HIS RETURN TO THE PULPIT TRAVELED AS FAST AS THE disease. I would have given anything to hear him preach, but while plague was indeed the great leveler, it had a proven fondness for those who were weak already. Had it just been me, I might have risked it for the sake of my insatiable curiosity, but I had to think for two now and in the end I compromised, accompanying Cristoforo in the carriage as far as the church to witness the throng, then going home while he went inside.

  That the crowd was smaller was obvious to everyone. Of course there were good reasons for that—fear of contagion or the illness itself. It would be a reckless man who diagnosed waning influence from the attendance for one sermon. Once inside, my husband said, Savonarola’s passion was undimmed, and no doubt all who heard him felt the fire of God in their bellies again. But on the streets, where his voice didn’t reach, not all the people were ill. Some seemed just weary, their bellies suffering other pains, this time from hunger, so that after a while it might become hard to tell one ache from another.

  The truth was that while the city still loved the friar and applauded his courage and her own closeness to God, she also wanted to be fed. Or at least be made to feel a little less miserable.

  My husband’s analysis on this topic was an elegant one. When the Medici had been in power, he said, because they had no more of a lifeline to God than anyone else (though a good deal more money), they had adopted a simple strategy to win the people. If they couldn’t offer salvation they could at least offer spectacle, something to make even the poorest feel better, proud of their city and proud of its vision, even if that vision only extended as far as celebration. Not that such events were godless. Far from it; they were conceived in praise and gratitude to God. It was there in all of them—the jousting, the tournaments, and the parades—it was just that they wore a happy, noisy, even profligate face. And whatever might take place during the festivities, there was always the option of confession the day after. In this way for a brief period people forgot what they didn’t have, and as long as things got better in the long run (or as long as they didn’t get any worse), that seemed enough. Such was the color and confidence of their reign that people felt as if they had lived under the Medici, which was a different feeling from simply preparing to die.